Speaker 1: This episode needs a warning label.
Speaker 2: We recorded on the road in a hotel lobby, and
Speaker 2: so the sound called is authentic, and that's it.
Speaker 1: I'll go with authentic with.
Speaker 2: The coming Fame, my Pain, the moneys, my Brain, Oh Whiskey.
Speaker 2: Why think alone when you can drink it all in
Speaker 2: with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders Steve Hayward,
Speaker 2: John U and the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia Where
Speaker 2: this lapsapp and David ain't easy on the shows?
Speaker 1: Have you got to give me? And let that whiskey?
Speaker 2: The Three Whiskey Happy Hour is back on the road
Speaker 2: for the second week.
Speaker 1: In a row.
Speaker 2: Lucretia and I are here in Tampa, Florida. John you
Speaker 2: was supposed to be here, but he flaked. But this
Speaker 2: gives us the opportunity to catch up with someone we've
Speaker 2: been wanting to catch up to you for a long time,
Speaker 2: and that's Glenn elmers Hi.
Speaker 3: Glenn, Welcome, Leks, Steve Hei, Linda, thank you having for
Speaker 3: having me very happy.
Speaker 2: Right right, So we've got to catch up with what
Speaker 2: you're up to in a bit. But let's punch out
Speaker 2: a couple of news stories quickly and then use a
Speaker 2: new story to get into some serious things. And the
Speaker 2: first one is just an observation. I'm not sure it's
Speaker 2: worth discussing much. But this week two Supreme Court justices
Speaker 2: made news, one by having to make an apology for
Speaker 2: making a personal attack because a fellow justice doesn't go
Speaker 2: on feelings, you know, right, Soda Mayor has a case
Speaker 2: of the feelings, that's your jurisprudence.
Speaker 1: And then of course she rec yeah, I do exactly,
Speaker 1: she letting up to it.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile you had Clarence Thomas talking about the Declaration
Speaker 2: of Independence and giving a very substantive view of constitutionalism
Speaker 2: and the contrast there. As I say, it doesn't require
Speaker 2: much comment, but the flora is yours if you want to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, isn't it astonishing that it Since the
Speaker 3: left has no regard for precedent and jurisprudence, they also
Speaker 3: have no regard for precedent in decorum either, Right, So
Speaker 3: I guess it's not a surprise that it's always someone
Speaker 3: from the left who breaks these long standing norms.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, the other thing that's really great I would
Speaker 2: expect Lucristy would say this is that she's not even
Speaker 2: the dumbest member of the corps.
Speaker 4: She has been surpassed in that she used to be.
Speaker 3: She has been surpassed, right, Yeah, the dumbest and the
Speaker 3: most loquacious. I get such a kick out of someone
Speaker 3: who did these word counts. And the youngest and clearly
Speaker 3: most inept justice is by far the most talkative.
Speaker 1: I know she's gonna be the you have that keeps
Speaker 1: on giving for a very long time. On the front, I.
Speaker 4: Have to tell you I have a little bit of
Speaker 4: I don't know if envy is quite the right word,
Speaker 4: but I kind of look at people like that, and
Speaker 4: you know, I remember being a young graduate student in
Speaker 4: Claremont and being kind of, for the longest time afraid
Speaker 4: to say anything just because I don't know anything and
Speaker 4: all of these people are smarter than me. And it's
Speaker 4: something I don't know that I ever got over. I
Speaker 4: know I got over acting that way, But you know,
Speaker 4: it's often the case that that I just wonder, how
Speaker 4: do people just open their mouths and not realize how
Speaker 4: stupid that they sound?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Is it an incredible level of stupidity that allows you
Speaker 4: to do that?
Speaker 3: Could this be our first Supreme Court justice afflicted with dunning?
Speaker 3: Krueger's injury.
Speaker 1: You know what, I wish you could get a case.
Speaker 1: It's dunning versus wish a test case and watch her
Speaker 1: trip all over that.
Speaker 2: Okay, So now the other story of the week that's
Speaker 2: more serious on two levels, the low and the high,
Speaker 2: is the Pope and our president are in a I
Speaker 2: don't want to use the.
Speaker 1: Bar the locker room phrase, but they're having a fight.
Speaker 1: And so, first.
Speaker 2: Of all, Lucasiu may remember, I resisted the view partly
Speaker 2: because of respect for Catholic doctrine.
Speaker 1: I resisted the view that.
Speaker 2: That Pope Leo was chosen because he's an American and
Speaker 2: they wanted somebody who could stand up to Trump. And
Speaker 2: I thought, look, Trump's only around for three more years.
Speaker 2: The Pope is supposed to be the age of the
Speaker 2: Holy Spirit. The Pope is going to be around for
Speaker 2: at least twenty years. Why would you have short term
Speaker 2: thinking like that. I'm rethinking this though. That's point number one.
Speaker 2: Point number two is, boy, what a contrast between this
Speaker 2: pope and say Benedict the sixteenth, Ratzinger or John Paul two,
Speaker 2: who are both against war in the general sense that,
Speaker 2: of course we deplore war in the abstract, but believed
Speaker 2: in just war, understood that there were real enemies in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Who needed to be defeated peacefully if.
Speaker 2: Possible, but by just war means, if necessary. And this
Speaker 2: Pope seems to have no grasp of that.
Speaker 4: It seems to think well, and I would probably concentrate
Speaker 4: even less than the just war that one sort of sailed.
Speaker 4: I think last week when the babylon Bee came out
Speaker 4: with that great thing that said, Pope Leo says that
Speaker 4: the Bible doesn't that nothing in the Bible supports war
Speaker 4: if you leave out Moses, you know, and it goes.
Speaker 1: Through all this people.
Speaker 4: But that's actually what Trump said either yesterday or today,
Speaker 4: to me, was even in many ways more profound. When
Speaker 4: they asked Trump what he thought about Iran executing a
Speaker 4: female protester, a young female protester, and he says, why
Speaker 4: don't you ask the Pope about that? And I think
Speaker 4: that that has been the most frustrating thing for me
Speaker 4: as a Catholic, as a practicing Catholic, is that the
Speaker 4: Pope is this Pope is willing to go put his
Speaker 4: hands on a block of ice for climate change. He's
Speaker 4: willing to go visit he's willing to let Muslims inside
Speaker 4: the Vatican for a special prayer room. There's all of
Speaker 4: these things that he's doing as an outreach to the
Speaker 4: Muslim community. He will not acknowledge in any serious way
Speaker 4: what's been happening in Nicaragua to Christian's in Nicaragua. I'm
Speaker 4: especially does especially close to my heart. We now have
Speaker 4: another priest from Nicaragua. One of my favorite priests ever
Speaker 4: in my parish was from Nicaragua. And I know what
Speaker 4: I know. I mean, his family's entire family was murdered,
Speaker 4: and the Pope doesn't care. The Pope cares about I
Speaker 4: guess politics. But the last thing I want to say
Speaker 4: is I want to bring up something Tom Honan said,
Speaker 4: who's also Homean homan Ya, who's also a practicing Catholic,
Speaker 4: and he talked about I've talked about this on the
Speaker 4: podcast before. I lived near the border. I know the
Speaker 4: human suffering that is caused by unrestricted illegal immigration. The
Speaker 4: You know, I have told the story before, but I'll
Speaker 4: tell it again. There's many, many others just like it.
Speaker 4: Of a good friend who's I went through a whole
Speaker 4: bottle of whiskey with after he rescued a four year
Speaker 4: old girl whose grandmother had sold her into sex trafficking.
Speaker 4: You know that happens all the time when you have
Speaker 4: all of these other illegal activities going on across the border.
Speaker 4: And the idea that the Pope would just, you know,
Speaker 4: slam Trump for his supposed cruel policies to illegal immigrants,
Speaker 4: it's just stupid. It's I don't know how else to
Speaker 4: say it, and I'm sorry, but it's stupid. And then
Speaker 4: of course we won't talk about the one point two
Speaker 4: billion dollars that the Catholic Bishop's got for a refugee resettlement. Anyway,
Speaker 4: I'm done. I doubt I'll have to go to confession now.
Speaker 4: But I did talk to my There's a priest in
Speaker 4: my parish who was the chaplain of the year for Arizona.
Speaker 4: Very conservative politically. He keeps that to himself, but he
Speaker 4: and I are very close. Who was his first duty
Speaker 4: station was with the IDF. And I asked him, I said,
Speaker 4: follow the rob tell me tell me how I'm supposed
Speaker 4: to think about this pope. And his argument was that
Speaker 4: the Vatican is such a cesspool that maybe I should
Speaker 4: give the pope a little bit of grace for a
Speaker 4: while and just see what happens. That was before the
Speaker 4: whole David axel Rod thing. So I don't know, I
Speaker 4: don't know anyway.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean again, just to draw from history, you
Speaker 2: go back to the eighties, right, and so you have
Speaker 2: the Cold War, you have the nuclear freeze going on,
Speaker 2: you have all the Catholic bishops condemning nuclear weapons as
Speaker 2: a sin.
Speaker 1: And there's John Paul two, who what was he doing?
Speaker 2: He was not not signing up for that, and he was,
Speaker 2: I mean, he had to let them give free range.
Speaker 2: He kind of have to, you know, being an archaic
Speaker 2: church in some ways despite the hierarchy. But the German
Speaker 2: bishops pushed back very strongly an interesting time about something
Speaker 2: that's much more cosmic than immigration, even quite a bit
Speaker 2: more so. I think, so the contract, then the other
Speaker 2: one is and this will draw into Glenn the theological
Speaker 2: political problem.
Speaker 1: So first of all, I.
Speaker 2: Did find this quote from Benedict the sixteenth.
Speaker 1: I think there's a word missing in this quote we
Speaker 1: got in front of us here.
Speaker 2: He said, an absolute pacifism that denies the law that
Speaker 2: any and all course of measures would be a capitulation
Speaker 2: to injustice, would sanction its seizure of power and would
Speaker 2: abandon the world to the dictates of violence. There's a
Speaker 2: man who had his head on straight. And I also
Speaker 2: remember we were talking before we started recording briefly about
Speaker 2: Churchill and thinking of that passage in his reflections on
Speaker 2: the Munich Agreement in the Gathering Storm where he has
Speaker 2: that quote at the end, and I forget the exact wording,
Speaker 2: but he talks about how.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna paraphrase, I understand that Christians are for peace and.
Speaker 2: Individually can be pacifists, he says, everyone admires the Quakers.
Speaker 2: Still it is not on these terms that government officials
Speaker 2: assume their seals of office. That was Churchill's way, I
Speaker 2: think in pointing at the theological political problem, and since you,
Speaker 2: along with our pal Ben some you Know's and two
Speaker 2: or three others, are one of the best thinkers on
Speaker 2: this subject, I'm going to now point to you and say.
Speaker 1: Go, well, I mean, I don't know, I explained to listeners.
Speaker 2: We've pried and failed at it, but I mean, do whatever,
Speaker 2: however you want to reflect on this from the high.
Speaker 1: Point of view.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, just on the on the pope question,
Speaker 3: it sort of reminds me in the old days when
Speaker 3: the New York Times used to say that a certain
Speaker 3: politician had grown in office, which meant that they had
Speaker 3: fallen in line with the narrative of the blob and it.
Speaker 3: You know, Linda just mentioned what this Vatican is like,
Speaker 3: and it seems like this pope has now grown in office,
Speaker 3: which means fallen in line with the official narrative. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the larger theological political problem, I.
Speaker 1: Mean it sort of ties in.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is what you wanted me
Speaker 3: to mention, but I have one book coming out that's
Speaker 3: in production with a publisher at Sundia University Press that
Speaker 3: Steve is actually a contributor to nineteen chapters on Leo
Speaker 3: Strauss's most influential Students that will be out in the
Speaker 3: spring from SUNI I'm excited about that. But I'm working
Speaker 3: on another problem about what I'm calling the First Crisis
Speaker 3: of the West, which is the collapse of piety in
Speaker 3: ancient Athens. So by the time Socrates is out questioning
Speaker 3: authoritative opinion in Athens, already elite opinion in Athenian society
Speaker 3: was starting to question the Olympian gods. Right, Zeus and
Speaker 3: Apollo and Athena are not really that believable. There's already
Speaker 3: a kind of enlightenment going on in classical Athens. And
Speaker 3: I think many of the serious thinkers at the time,
Speaker 3: Plato certainly, but Thucydides, the great historian of the Pelponnesian War,
Speaker 3: the comic player at Aristophanes, are looking at this question
Speaker 3: of what happens when the gods are no longer believe
Speaker 3: And this goes to what Strauss understood is the theological
Speaker 3: political problem is how can you have law without divine sanction?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: There, nomos in the classical world is always divine nomos. Right,
Speaker 3: the law comes from the gods. But if the gods
Speaker 3: are no longer believable, if the gods are not authoritative,
Speaker 3: then what is the source of the law. And we're
Speaker 3: going through this now. Strauss talked about the crisis of
Speaker 3: the West, and in part it's the collapse of faith
Speaker 3: in Western civilization, in reason, but also faith in the Bible.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting to me that I think this has
Speaker 3: already happened to some degree, and although in a slightly
Speaker 3: different way, in classical Athens, and that the classical thinkers
Speaker 3: are thinking about that and so I'm curious to see
Speaker 3: if there's anything from the collapse of Athenian piety that
Speaker 3: might be relative to understanding our own crisis of the
Speaker 3: West today.
Speaker 2: Okay, go ahead, Okay, Well, I'm trying to think of
Speaker 2: my hit my Greek history, which I don't actually know
Speaker 2: that well.
Speaker 1: I mean to make a long story short.
Speaker 2: Does Athens fall apart when piety falls apart?
Speaker 1: It doesn't fall apart.
Speaker 3: But remember we're not that far off from Alexander. And
Speaker 3: you know, as our teacher Jaffi used to talk about
Speaker 3: the ancient polist collapses basically when the empires begin to rise.
Speaker 3: So you've got Persia, but really Alexander and then Rome.
Speaker 3: And starting with Alexander, but then certainly with Rome, the
Speaker 3: ancient polis, with its own special gods of the city
Speaker 3: falls away, right, And so the rise of empire coincides
Speaker 3: with the rise of the first universal religion, which is Christianity,
Speaker 3: and so the collapse of the polis is in a
Speaker 3: way codominious with the collapse of the gods of the cities.
Speaker 3: And you know, if you think about the causes, there's
Speaker 3: a lot going on. As I said, there's already a
Speaker 3: kind of enlightenment, you have this rise of the sofas,
Speaker 3: you have the presocratic philosophers, you have the tragedians. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's not the blame is not all on Socrates in
Speaker 3: the way Socrates is more of a symptom than a cause.
Speaker 3: There are already a lot of factors going on, uh
Speaker 3: to cause this crisis of faith, not just an Athens,
Speaker 3: but but particularly because it's the most cosmopolitan city.
Speaker 2: Well, so I'm trying to piece it theeter to get
Speaker 2: to the problem of the current pope.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, one way.
Speaker 4: This is it's simple. In some ways it's simple. I
Speaker 4: would just say this, Stephen, I don't want to I
Speaker 4: don't want you to fall silent. Here's the difference. When
Speaker 4: you have a universal god, uh, you don't. You no
Speaker 4: longer have gods of the city, and so you either
Speaker 4: have universal rule. We sort of tried that and it
Speaker 4: didn't work out so well. And then you have, of
Speaker 4: course the Machiavelian uh revolt against that idea of of
Speaker 4: you know, a religious universal rule. That's probably a little
Speaker 4: bit oversimplified. But what you have to get to today
Speaker 4: is looking at the American situation, where this whole thing
Speaker 4: with Trump is kind of silly. I suspect that it's
Speaker 4: a deliberate effort to separate the Catholics, who are very
Speaker 4: much in favor of Trump at the moment, from Trump
Speaker 4: and trying you know, I suspect that. But nevertheless, there
Speaker 4: are serious, serious things happening in the background. Why is
Speaker 4: it that Americans can in fact criticize the pope? Why
Speaker 4: can we criticize the Pope?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, yeah, well this is right. Sorry, this
Speaker 2: is the hypocrisy. Here is the left right now? You
Speaker 2: mentioned David Axelrod going to see the Pope. It sort
Speaker 2: of looks there's a lot of visible fingerprints here.
Speaker 1: It looks like what they're trying to do is to.
Speaker 2: Agitate against an institution that the left hates more than.
Speaker 1: Any other institution. Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, the Trump is attacking the Catholics like we do
Speaker 2: before breakfast. I mean, it's just breathtaking the hypocrisy and
Speaker 2: the opportunism of this right. But what I was thinking
Speaker 2: about is, Okay, you've a universal religion, the separation of
Speaker 2: you no longer have your political duty and your religious Dude,
Speaker 2: you're separate, righty, And the Pope will.
Speaker 1: Unknowingly perhaps is.
Speaker 2: Trying to erode that that distinction I think. I mean,
Speaker 2: he really is making a claim for how we should
Speaker 2: be ruled, and he may not claim the right to
Speaker 2: rule himself directly, but he's certainly very different again from Benedict,
Speaker 2: who remember his famous Regensburg.
Speaker 1: Address that upset the Islamic world because what.
Speaker 2: He say, essentially you're saying is the Islamic world does
Speaker 2: not recognize the logical political problem. They claim a universal
Speaker 2: religion with a universal uniform mode of rule and prescription,
Speaker 2: and you know, no individual liberty, no limited government.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So that's what I'm sort of getting at that this
Speaker 2: has blown this whole question up in ways that are
Speaker 2: hard to get.
Speaker 4: Let me just say one thing, which is why the
Speaker 4: Pope's embrace of Islam and Muslim religion and so forth
Speaker 4: is so insidious.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if.
Speaker 4: John the Second he he he fought against a true
Speaker 4: evil in the world. He didn't embrace communism. And I'm
Speaker 4: not even saying that there can't be some overtures by
Speaker 4: the Catholics to the Muslim world. But what the Pope
Speaker 4: is doing is just appalling and like I say, insidious,
Speaker 4: I think, but go ahead, please.
Speaker 3: So I dashed out into left field talking about my
Speaker 3: book without really making the connection back to what we
Speaker 3: were talking about. But there is interesting. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not defending the pope, but if you go back to
Speaker 3: the ancient world, one reason that this crisis of piety
Speaker 3: that I'm talking about was so such a serious problem
Speaker 3: is again there had always the idea of separating church
Speaker 3: and state would have been inconceivable in the.
Speaker 1: Class exactly.
Speaker 3: To be patriotic and to be pious was essentially the
Speaker 3: same thing. Right to obey the law is to obey
Speaker 3: the laws that came from the gods of your city.
Speaker 3: And that's in a way what Strauss called natural politics.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The theological political problem takes a really dramatic turn with
Speaker 3: the rise of Christianity, which is not only universal so
Speaker 3: it transcends all political obligations, but also a political in
Speaker 3: a way, right, because secular authority is distinct. It's a
Speaker 3: religion not of obedience to the law, but of doctrine.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: What matters is not that you follow the rituals and
Speaker 3: ceremonies of the city, but that you believe in certain
Speaker 3: theological tenets. And so in an odd way, although I'm
Speaker 3: not defending the pope, he's in a way reverting back
Speaker 3: to a kind of assumption that law and religion are
Speaker 3: not really separable. Right, How can you be the head
Speaker 3: of the church, How can you speak authority on matters
Speaker 3: of morality and yet stay out of politics. Our American inclination,
Speaker 3: because of our heritage of the separation church and state,
Speaker 3: which did in fact solve a very serious problem, is
Speaker 3: in a way complicated because the natural human inclination, from
Speaker 3: the ancient's point of view, is to keep politics in
Speaker 3: religion together, and it's actually a hard thing to separate them.
Speaker 4: Isn't that the problem at the heart of Lincoln's lyceum
Speaker 4: address as well? Yes, that you simply do not have
Speaker 4: the respect the tradition, the I don't know that even
Speaker 4: the awe of the law, if it does not have
Speaker 4: some sort of religious foundation. If you can, Jefferson, even
Speaker 4: can the liberties of a people be thought secure if
Speaker 4: we remove their only firm basis that these rights are
Speaker 4: the gift of God. But remember what Lincoln tries to
Speaker 4: substitute it with. He calls it this political religion, religion
Speaker 4: called sober reason will have to be our guide from
Speaker 4: now on, you know. And yeah, so there's problems from
Speaker 4: both sides of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, I brought up that phrase from
Speaker 2: Lincoln once with David Horowitz. Of course, he reacted very
Speaker 2: badly to it for an entirely sensible reason. He was
Speaker 2: thinking of twentieth century political religion meant the messianic, utopian,
Speaker 2: totalitarian ideologies that fought against through the second half of
Speaker 2: his life right now, and what that represents in a
Speaker 2: certain way is also a dissolve of the theology, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, look as not just Jaffa, but a lot
Speaker 2: of people recognizes that Marxism was a Christian heresy in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways. So that understanding of political religion
Speaker 2: in the twentieth century of the horrors, And I said, no, no,
Speaker 2: Lincoln is a completely It took a while for me
Speaker 2: to get through to him that no, it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: what you think it means. I understand why you think that,
Speaker 2: and why that phrase would be incendiary to someone who
Speaker 2: came out of the radical world as he did, right,
Speaker 2: and recognized it.
Speaker 1: So there is that it's hard to recover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Lincoln draws. Of course, he says at
Speaker 3: one point all my political opinions ultimately come from Jefferson.
Speaker 3: And when I teach this question in the Clermont Fellowship programs,
Speaker 3: I always point out that the Framers solve this problem
Speaker 3: and try to fix it in a way that's quite ingenious.
Speaker 3: And this I learned from Jaffa by establishing what Jaffa
Speaker 3: called a natural theology. Right, And so in the Declaration,
Speaker 3: you have the laws of nature and Nature's God. So
Speaker 3: there is a sacred transcendent authority, right, but it's a
Speaker 3: ecumenical it's not tied to any one particular church. So
Speaker 3: you can have a natural authority, you can have a
Speaker 3: divine or transcendent source of the law and still maintain
Speaker 3: the separation of church and state. But that's actually a
Speaker 3: complicated and difficult thing to do, and it depends, among
Speaker 3: other things, on having a virtuous educated populace. And once
Speaker 3: you lose that, then the whole complicated structure of maintaining
Speaker 3: that really is hard to sustain.
Speaker 4: And I think you can't just say that that it's
Speaker 4: a lack of an educated populace. Also have to I
Speaker 4: think I think you have to admit that the project
Speaker 4: of the left has been to destroy any possibility that
Speaker 4: any sort of religious influence or even some sort of
Speaker 4: you know, think about our great presidents like Regan and Lincoln.
Speaker 4: I don't know, you could Trump, you could maybe even
Speaker 4: include in this Jefferson, who had no who belonged to
Speaker 4: no specific religious sect. And for that reason we're able
Speaker 4: to be somewhat more pro religious. But but you compare
Speaker 4: that to what the left has tried to do, which
Speaker 4: is destroy any possibility that that that there's a standard
Speaker 4: of goodness outside of the human self, and that the
Speaker 4: each human being can essentially be his or her own God.
Speaker 4: And I know that's really taking in a whole lot,
Speaker 4: but I think that that's part of why we've seen
Speaker 4: the destruction of any religious influence from the youngest possible ages.
Speaker 4: What it really does matter.
Speaker 3: Remember a few decades ago when the ACLU devoted enormous
Speaker 3: energy to getting the words under God out of the pledge.
Speaker 3: And that's a you know, that's a good example, because
Speaker 3: the American conception of religious liberty did not preclude the
Speaker 3: recognition of some divine authority, right, it was not a
Speaker 3: violation of the separation of church and state to say
Speaker 3: there is a God. I mean, it's in the Declaration
Speaker 3: of Independence, after all, Right, But as you say, Linda,
Speaker 3: the left has driven even this very minimal natural theology
Speaker 3: out of our public life, and it's very hard to
Speaker 3: sustain republican self government when that goes away.
Speaker 4: Now, I just would mention it's a little bit off topic,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to talk about it a few weeks ago,
Speaker 4: and we just never got to it. And that is
Speaker 4: all of Right before Easter, there were lots and lots
Speaker 4: of news reports, news stories out there about how young
Speaker 4: people are sort of rejecting that nihilism and turning to
Speaker 4: They were talking specifically in most of the stories I
Speaker 4: heard about Catholicism, but much more traditional views of religion,
Speaker 4: not even like what was very popular you knew in
Speaker 4: the sixties. I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual, you know
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. Anyway, I just I think that
Speaker 4: the crisis we find ourselves in has probably caused a
Speaker 4: somewhat I don't know if i'd call it a reawakening,
Speaker 4: but it is interesting to see that some of that
Speaker 4: young people are sort of rejecting that nihilistic view will
Speaker 4: to power of the world obviously not wholesale.
Speaker 2: But now the good news is John, you being absent
Speaker 2: today is listening and if his head hasn't.
Speaker 1: Exploded by now, he's surely reaching for some hemlock. That's good,
Speaker 1: a right. Let's use that to pivot on to a
Speaker 1: couple other fun things. One is, I didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to reread.
Speaker 2: And assimilate your review of Laura Field's book or Michael's
Speaker 2: scorching review. So listeners, do you want to summarize the
Speaker 2: book briefly for listeners since we haven't mentioned it much,
Speaker 2: I don't think right.
Speaker 1: Go ahead.
Speaker 3: So Laura Field is this left wing Straussian who studied
Speaker 3: with some Straussian scholars and then bounced around a little
Speaker 3: bit in academia, but then sort of found a home,
Speaker 3: as I say in my review, a self appointed inquisitor
Speaker 3: writing for The Bulwark and other outlets, attacking all sorts
Speaker 3: of renegade opinions and excommunicating people from acceptable thought, in
Speaker 3: particular the Claremont Institute. She's now written and published a
Speaker 3: book by I'm sorry to say, Princeton University Press called
Speaker 3: Furious Minds, which is a long, sustained, in many places,
Speaker 3: quite nasty attack on what she calls the Maga intellectuals.
Speaker 3: And the whole point is to delegitimize and again excommunicate
Speaker 3: all sorts of thinkers and institutions who do not bye
Speaker 3: by which he regards as acceptable liberal opinion. It's it's
Speaker 3: really it's it's passed off as a work of scholarship
Speaker 3: published by a university press, but it's really does not
Speaker 3: engage in any kind of serious argument. It really cannot
Speaker 3: deal with disagreement and good faith. Uh, it doesn't try
Speaker 3: to understand people as they understand themselves. All the MAGA intellectuals,
Speaker 3: you know are dismissed as racists and sexists and and
Speaker 3: haters of liberal democracy. So it's really it's actually quite
Speaker 3: a disappointing.
Speaker 1: But well it's quite an ad hominem.
Speaker 2: I mean you you quote her in your review talking
Speaker 2: about Harry Jaffa that I find Jappa's later writings unreadable.
Speaker 1: Well, that's because she's too lazy to actually work through it.
Speaker 2: And the other thing she mentioned, Yes, she picks on
Speaker 2: our you know, on us and our friends, but she
Speaker 2: also picks on the postliberals, Patanine and.
Speaker 3: Rebewal, who's the and the national conservative convatives.
Speaker 2: Now, then you could have written, even from a critical
Speaker 2: point of view, you could have written an interest somewhat
Speaker 2: interest book about their differences, and can.
Speaker 4: These guys understand them first well.
Speaker 2: Okay, exactly right, or at least try even if you
Speaker 2: didn't understand them.
Speaker 1: Very well, you could have at least tried. And there's
Speaker 1: not even.
Speaker 2: Attempt to that because there are some clear tensions there, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we have serious disagreements with the
Speaker 2: post liberals, right.
Speaker 4: And I really I think it may be one of
Speaker 4: the most important questions right now we as we're thinking
Speaker 4: about the anniversary of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 4: of the Declaration of Independence and if it even matters,
Speaker 4: who is it that can carry the torch forward? And
Speaker 4: it's not liberals at all, but the debates between conservatives
Speaker 4: about and mostly you know, our friends, about what is
Speaker 4: the appropriate way to understand the natural law basis of
Speaker 4: the Declaration of Independence that I think the future of
Speaker 4: the country depends upon it.
Speaker 1: Now actually, now it just occurs to me that recurring
Speaker 1: briefly to our previous topic of the Pope. The post
Speaker 1: liberals they love the Pope. They always do it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, because.
Speaker 2: They're they're serious Catholics, and so what are the end
Speaker 2: But they're also by by Trump. I think somewhat, so
Speaker 2: they must be having They're being very silent about this.
Speaker 1: I just realized as we're sitting here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, watch one of the one of
Speaker 3: the really lamentable things about this book is she attacks
Speaker 3: people for contradictory reasons. I mean, she attacks the post
Speaker 3: liberals for neglecting the importance of Lockian protection of equal
Speaker 3: natural rights. But then you know, in the very next
Speaker 3: breath attacks Clermont for it supposedly hagiographic defense of America's
Speaker 3: the Lockian found it. So you know, she's not even
Speaker 3: consistent in her in her criticism.
Speaker 4: I think the only thing I found consistent is just
Speaker 4: that she has fully embraced most aspects of left wing
Speaker 4: ideology and the argument that she's she's living. Her book
Speaker 4: is living proof of why women don't make good political philosophers.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, but you can. I can be sexist in
Speaker 4: a way you two can't. You know, her book reminds
Speaker 4: me of a full length manuscript that is the functional
Speaker 4: equivalent of those women who who left got up and
Speaker 4: left in the middle of Larry Summer's speech at Harvard
Speaker 4: and and and you know said, I almost fainted. I
Speaker 4: was so upset.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, Mike's review Bring This brings this
Speaker 3: out much more than I than mine does. It's a
Speaker 3: fair criticism because she herself talks all about her psychological
Speaker 3: state and her emotions and how she felt about this,
Speaker 3: that and the other thing. So she invites this criticism
Speaker 3: that she wrote this book as as an emotional woman,
Speaker 3: which is the point that that Mike makes in his review.
Speaker 2: But one of my favorite parts of Mike's review, and
Speaker 2: I go in for things like this is she refers
Speaker 2: to us as Claire Monter's.
Speaker 1: As Mike points out, no one uses that.
Speaker 2: You can say clairemont conservative, but really we're Claire Monsters proudly.
Speaker 2: What's wrong with her? I mean that would seemed like
Speaker 2: a layup, but.
Speaker 1: No, that's not. That's how sort of okay.
Speaker 3: It's it's a kind of faux objectivity. I think that
Speaker 3: she's going for there.
Speaker 4: Right, Maybe yeah, she does. She does do that over
Speaker 4: and over again, pretend, Oh, look, I went to an
Speaker 4: AEI conference. I was once a right winger.
Speaker 2: Well, but that that one that's worth mentioning because it
Speaker 2: wasn't just any old AI conference. It was a conference
Speaker 2: to celebrate Harvey Mansfield. And she talked about Oh, I
Speaker 2: couldn't wait to get out of the suppressive air.
Speaker 4: Seriously, I mean, and then then her nasty little comments
Speaker 4: about Harvey and his wife.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, Mike picks up on that that is just
Speaker 2: his younger wife after his previous wife died of cancer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean talk about.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, I mean she got the vapors from listening
Speaker 3: to these notorious right wing maniacs like Bill Crystal.
Speaker 1: And I mean, come on, I wonder.
Speaker 4: If I wonder she's some sort of re embraced Bill Crystal.
Speaker 2: Probably, Oh, I think they've been on like podcasts and
Speaker 2: stuff together, right, right, it's a I mean, I know
Speaker 2: you've all I like him, but I would never confuse
Speaker 2: him with a firebrand, right, Usually when he goes in
Speaker 2: the room, the fires go out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and even Harvey himself is pretty conservative. He's also
Speaker 3: very genteel. You know, he never says anything really incendiary
Speaker 3: or over the line, although he has very strong opinion,
Speaker 3: so you know.
Speaker 4: Or if he says that, people don't understand it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So if so, if a conference at AI in honor
Speaker 3: of Harvey Mansfield is you know, beyond the pale, that
Speaker 3: shows you where she's coming from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's probably all we need to say about that.
Speaker 1: But well, let's put it this way. I have this vague.
Speaker 2: It's a vague idea that's not even an idea yet.
Speaker 2: It may better be a concept looking for an outline.
Speaker 2: But as what he Allen once put it, I think,
Speaker 2: and it's I'm thinking about some of the next generation
Speaker 2: of young thinkers, some of them Eustrassius pulled philosophers, some
Speaker 2: just decent thinkers and in other disciplines.
Speaker 1: And what I notice.
Speaker 2: About them is there's a kind of detachment from the
Speaker 2: crisis of the West.
Speaker 1: I'll put it that directly.
Speaker 2: It was very cute for us when we were coming
Speaker 2: along in the eighties because that was the climax of
Speaker 2: the Cold War again, the nuclear freeze, the theological political
Speaker 2: problem we've already referred to with the pope and the bishops.
Speaker 1: And all the rest.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And now I see a lot very smart. I like
Speaker 1: some of these younger guys. I'm not going to mention
Speaker 1: any names, but you know, we both know some of
Speaker 1: these people very well.
Speaker 2: And I think they're very smart. But they tend to
Speaker 2: remind me of Seth Bernardetti. They want to do sort
Speaker 2: of pure philosophical abstract Exte Jesus and texts. Not there's
Speaker 2: anything wrong with that in and of itself, but there
Speaker 2: seems to be a lack of this. Well, Lucretia would
Speaker 2: say thumos or famos whichever which.
Speaker 4: Do Yeah, I see themis, but I would before Glenn
Speaker 4: gives a serious answer to this, I would say that
Speaker 4: maybe they're just trying to distinguish themselves from Manisphere side
Speaker 4: of suppose that the crazy nutty right wing like the
Speaker 4: guy who got taken out. I don't remember some influencer,
Speaker 4: some Manisphere influencer, but if you read about some of
Speaker 4: those nutjob young men, do you know that that care.
Speaker 4: I can't say what the guy was saying when when
Speaker 4: somebody just punched him and took him out, but it
Speaker 4: was something along the lines of that. I'll say the
Speaker 4: last part, which is you shouldn't be putting your your
Speaker 4: man force, your manly life force into a sock, and
Speaker 4: if you do, you should get the death penalty.
Speaker 2: Look, I do think we want to make a distinction
Speaker 2: between some of the people we call the alt right,
Speaker 2: or people like Athenian Stranger.
Speaker 1: We both know him a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very engaged he's very serious about what's wrong
Speaker 2: with things, and they're in the bodybuilding and masculinity.
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking of them as much. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: the people who are sort of aloof from it.
Speaker 2: And partly I have actual serious interpretive questions to generated
Speaker 2: all this.
Speaker 1: But am I just taking crazy pills or I know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about?
Speaker 3: So I think in the case of the Straussians in particular,
Speaker 3: you know, they're too serious and they're too well educated
Speaker 3: to leap over into the BAP world, right, Yes, bronze
Speaker 3: h pervert, which is a little juvenile and a little extreme.
Speaker 3: You know, they thought seriously about political questions. But I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a little reluctant to say this, but
Speaker 3: I think their view is the West has declined so far.
Speaker 3: They're pessimistic about the possibility of any real political action
Speaker 3: informed by serious, thoughtful political philosophy, and so they retreat
Speaker 3: in a way into the study of texts. I mean,
Speaker 3: during the Cold War, the fight was real, you know,
Speaker 3: and by the way, you know, we won. It was
Speaker 3: a fight worth fighting. It was, you know, the seriousnessness
Speaker 3: of it was evident. Now I think, you know, for
Speaker 3: anyone under forty you know, they never even experienced this directly.
Speaker 3: And you know, they've seen the decline in the culture,
Speaker 3: They've seen the disintegration of our political institutions. There's no
Speaker 3: clear external enemy to fight, and so I think that
Speaker 3: they just disengage from politics because they don't see a
Speaker 3: fight that they can bring their political philosophy background into.
Speaker 4: I remember reading a year or so ago an argument
Speaker 4: that said, these young people, because they've never experienced, say,
Speaker 4: the Reagan era, the Trumpet era is a bit chaotic,
Speaker 4: shall we say, But because they've never actually seen what
Speaker 4: I would call maybe good conservativism, They've never that there's
Speaker 4: nothing in politics that they can that they have experienced
Speaker 4: that they could embrace. It's much like what you're saying.
Speaker 4: But it's also a lack of experience with any of
Speaker 4: those embrace you know, the conflict of the century kind
Speaker 4: of this Western civilization versus world annihilation, whatever it might be.
Speaker 4: There aren't those great problems that they've ever had any
Speaker 4: experience fighting on behalf of or four or against right,
Speaker 4: and so they don't have that experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Trump has changed that a little. I mean,
Speaker 3: I do know quite a few Straussians who are more
Speaker 3: right wing than you'd suspect, and are even more supportive
Speaker 3: of Trump than you might suspect, and keep that to
Speaker 3: themselves a little bit for various reasons. I think the
Speaker 3: phenomenon is these a lot of these people came to
Speaker 3: the age you might say, between Reagan and Trump, right,
Speaker 3: and so they came of age in the worst wishy
Speaker 3: washy part of the Republic. And so they didn't see
Speaker 3: anything in American politics admirable or noble to attach themselves to,
Speaker 3: because all they saw was the wishy washy block way
Speaker 3: to put it. And so it's interesting, you know, a
Speaker 3: few years down the line, whether Trump will change that,
Speaker 3: and if there'll be a turn response to the Trump phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's a Then also an interpretive question comes
Speaker 2: to mind, and this is another half forne thought, and
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I'm even on the right track. But so,
Speaker 2: first of all, we're against radical historicism. We're against interpreting
Speaker 2: the thinkers of the.
Speaker 1: Past according to our own horizons today. Okay. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, I don't think Straus. I always have a
Speaker 1: hard time making in my mind how to express this.
Speaker 2: I don't think Strauss was against understanding the context. I
Speaker 2: mean especially the blatonic dialogue, so the setting is always.
Speaker 1: Very sure, right.
Speaker 2: So it's not that that's a complaint I heard from
Speaker 2: well meaning, friendly people like Fred Siegel, a historian.
Speaker 1: He said, no, And you know, we've talked about Roger
Speaker 1: Scrutin this way too, right.
Speaker 2: They both say it just that methodology, not just esoteric writing,
Speaker 2: but also just the isolation on the text, letting it
Speaker 2: speak for itself as a timeless truth.
Speaker 1: That seems a historical to me.
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking that that's not a correct understanding, I think,
Speaker 2: but there is something to it to the extent that
Speaker 2: to what you just said.
Speaker 1: What strikes me is during those Cold.
Speaker 2: War years, there was an urgency of things that made
Speaker 2: an extra seriousness to our increase. They were necessarily going
Speaker 2: to be more political in the high sense of the word,
Speaker 2: and there wasn't time to fiddle around with a.
Speaker 1: Couple of verses of sophocles about beauty or something right,
Speaker 1: And that seems to be this is the missing.
Speaker 2: Part of the soul of so many younger people who
Speaker 2: want to be intellectual or serious about political philosophy. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I'm right about that, but it does
Speaker 2: mean that to what extent.
Speaker 1: Do we then look back.
Speaker 2: At Strauss because look, I mean you read the autobiographical
Speaker 2: preface about it being a Jew in Weimar, Germany, and
Speaker 2: then all the things he talked in other words, I
Speaker 2: can't imagine.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure you put Trowser a time machine.
Speaker 2: But I don't see him as successors writing something today
Speaker 2: like his introduction to the City in Man, which where
Speaker 2: the overlay of the Cold War was so central to
Speaker 2: it while he was transcending it in lots of movie.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's a mouthful. Is that you're not in your head.
Speaker 2: I'm not shaking your head, So I'm not making total nonsense.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that's all true.
Speaker 3: And you know, I did a piece for Perspectives on
Speaker 3: political Science not that long ago, and it's not just
Speaker 3: the introduction of City Man. But then if you compare
Speaker 3: also the introduction to liberalism mantion in modern you can
Speaker 3: see a progression in Strauss's thought and he actually becomes
Speaker 3: a little bit more pessimistic about the crisis of the West,
Speaker 3: and he's he's engaged in looking at policy issues. He
Speaker 3: talks about contemporary political controversies. So it's funny how historicism
Speaker 3: is so easily misunder It doesn't mean ignoring historical context.
Speaker 1: That's silly.
Speaker 3: The real thing is does the truth change according to right?
Speaker 3: Is the truth historically contingent? It doesn't mean ignoring I mean,
Speaker 3: one of the reasons I'm writing this book is I'm
Speaker 3: interested in the context. What's going on in Athens when
Speaker 3: Plato was writing, and that matters. The only real danger
Speaker 3: is assuming that Plato couldn't have said anything true, or
Speaker 3: that whatever truth he discovered is you know, trapped in
Speaker 3: classical ethics. That's but it certainly doesn't. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 3: problem with the stories is it doesn't mean ignoring context
Speaker 3: in which things happens.
Speaker 4: Stress had always said the opposite, always said the opposite.
Speaker 4: But but if you cannot, if you cannot discover in
Speaker 4: ancient Athens that what might have been the factors that
Speaker 4: have that would have led ultimately to the rejection of
Speaker 4: the gods is the lawgivers of the city and all
Speaker 4: of that. What that meant, What I think that means
Speaker 4: for us today is then Athens doesn't matter because nothing,
Speaker 4: you know, it is historically contingent, and there is no
Speaker 4: truth that we can learn from Athens and apply to today.
Speaker 4: But of course good Straussians know better than than coming
Speaker 4: to that conclusion easily, I guess, is the way I
Speaker 4: would say, because we otherwise, what's the point other than
Speaker 4: reminds me of the end of the Fukiyama's book, you know,
Speaker 4: where now that we've solved all the problems of history,
Speaker 4: what do we do? We have these fancy Japanese tea setups,
Speaker 4: and we just work to make sure every tiny detail
Speaker 4: it is right, because nothing else matters right. That's why
Speaker 4: Athens matters right right. And you know, I'm patting you
Speaker 4: on the back for doing it.
Speaker 3: Just a very prosaic observation, which you know all of
Speaker 3: your listeners have heard many times. But it's been a
Speaker 3: long time since we've had a real statesman in the West.
Speaker 3: You know, we tend to see Lincoln and Churchill as
Speaker 3: coming from two vastly different worlds, but they're not that
Speaker 3: far apart in history. And you know, it's been many,
Speaker 3: many decades when we've had a statesman of that caliber.
Speaker 3: And I think that also leads to a kind of
Speaker 3: disillusionment with politics. That amazing thing that Churchill wrote that
Speaker 3: Strauss wrote about Churchill, that he shows the political phenomena.
Speaker 3: He shows what meglosukia can mean. And when you don't
Speaker 3: have any example of that in living memory, you know
Speaker 3: it affects people.
Speaker 4: But I would go one step further and say, what
Speaker 4: distinguishes one group, Maybe it's the Western Staosians, I'm not
Speaker 4: quite sure, from the other Straussians. Is the belief that
Speaker 4: that that idea of statesmanship is in and of itself
Speaker 4: a matter of prudence. And you can embrace a Trump
Speaker 4: because only someone with Trump's what should we call them,
Speaker 4: only Trump's chaos, only Trump's bomb bombastic nature, only his narcissism.
Speaker 4: In many ways, it would allow him to do what
Speaker 4: he's trying to do.
Speaker 1: You know something to that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's why I've compared him to de gaul
Speaker 2: a few times, similar personal characteristics. Right now, you said something, Oh,
Speaker 2: by the way you use the P word, there are
Speaker 2: three subjects banned when John's and our presence.
Speaker 1: The Clean Air Act, natural law, and prudence. We've done
Speaker 1: all three. So his head's now exploded for the third time.
Speaker 1: You said something a minute ago.
Speaker 2: You know Strauss commenting on contemporary issues. I know he
Speaker 2: does a lot of that in the transcripts of his classes.
Speaker 2: You've been reading a lot of those, I think, yes,
Speaker 2: have it just struck me that there could be a
Speaker 2: great article written about Strauss on the issues, drawing from.
Speaker 3: All that I have thought about that, I mean the transcripts.
Speaker 3: You're wonderful he talks to even about television shows. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was like, as you know, from gun Smoke last week,
Speaker 3: because he loved gun Smoke, Perry Mason and other things.
Speaker 1: And he does bring that up.
Speaker 3: And it would be wonderful to call all those out
Speaker 3: and put them together and see. You know something I
Speaker 3: pointed out. Also, people forget Strauss signed a letter endorsing
Speaker 3: Richard Nixon in nineteen seventy two along with a few
Speaker 3: other so he was not quite entirely as removed from
Speaker 3: politics as some people seem to think.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, and.
Speaker 4: You give him a little credit for some modesty. Also,
Speaker 4: I told Steve that the guy that I sent you
Speaker 4: the article about the from the guy who wrote the
Speaker 4: stuff about the decoration of Independence, that it was good
Speaker 4: marketing but otherwise nonsense. And I told you I was
Speaker 4: offended that, you know, shut up, go fix your own
Speaker 4: good country and of London. I'm sorry, And you know,
Speaker 4: so I think that to some extent, the idea that
Speaker 4: Strauss would have commented extensively on American politics would have
Speaker 4: been presumptuous. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 4: His best student, in my opinion, was probably the very
Speaker 4: best commentator on American politics ever. And I don't get
Speaker 4: the sense that Strauss ever disavowed him for that. But
Speaker 4: is that an impossible view of the matter. There's nothing
Speaker 4: he was going to be able to do about German politics,
Speaker 4: right but where it mattered, and he said it, he
Speaker 4: said it mattered, and you know, in natural rite and
Speaker 4: history it mattered. But for him to have been a
Speaker 4: commentator about American politics I think would have been again
Speaker 4: a bit presumptuous.
Speaker 1: Well maybe my sense of it, you think then?
Speaker 2: My sense of it is he thought that he would
Speaker 2: more effective and exactly the mode that he operated, which
Speaker 2: was teaching right and making people think.
Speaker 1: And I think maybe he had some confidence, especially as
Speaker 1: time went on in the fifties that.
Speaker 2: There's a big debate ab whether he understood himself as
Speaker 2: founding a real school, and some people say he did,
Speaker 2: some people say didn't. But at some point he had
Speaker 2: to see that, Oh, I see how this is going
Speaker 2: to play out? Is the fact that you know, the
Speaker 2: book he was assembled of essays about his students, most
Speaker 2: of whom I think this is fair to say, concentrated
Speaker 2: on American politics, whereas he did very little of that himself.
Speaker 1: Right right, right now.
Speaker 3: It is surprising how many of the students were interested
Speaker 3: in America and wrote about it. Yeah, No, I think
Speaker 3: you're both right. Strauss certainly didn't make any sort of
Speaker 3: principled stand, you know, opposing any discussion of policy issues.
Speaker 3: But he thought he had other fish to fry, and
Speaker 3: that was rescuing political philosophy from the oblivion into which
Speaker 3: it had been cast by value free social science, right,
Speaker 3: and that was the crucial thing to do. There's a
Speaker 3: wonderful passage I wish I could quote from mem in
Speaker 3: one of his lectures, where he says that true Socratic
Speaker 3: philosophy is rising above the hurly burly and the vanity
Speaker 3: fair of every day and looking at the permanent questions.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what he wanted to direct his
Speaker 3: students' minds.
Speaker 2: To let me ask you one closing question here, and
Speaker 2: then we'll do a wrap up. And it gets back
Speaker 2: to something that Lucretian I've been involved in lately, we
Speaker 2: did this goofy little debate with a Saving Elephants blog
Speaker 2: people on Burke and Strauss's chapter on Burke.
Speaker 1: What's your opinion about I don't really go through the
Speaker 1: whole argument of the chapter.
Speaker 2: But why do you think he decided to pick on
Speaker 2: Burke at the end of the book instead of sey
Speaker 2: Kant or somebody else.
Speaker 1: Because really it's kind of when he comes back to the.
Speaker 2: Subject in a certain way in the three Waves of
Speaker 2: Modernity and what is Political Philosophy, he drops.
Speaker 1: Burke at all.
Speaker 2: He already ever talks about Burke ever again. So why,
Speaker 2: I mean, what's your theory of that? Do you have
Speaker 2: a theory or a rumor?
Speaker 3: I've actually sometimes had this discussion with John Marine and
Speaker 3: John's theory, which I'll offer with credit to him, with
Speaker 3: the proviso that I may not be giving it to justice.
Speaker 3: Is Strauss is pointing to the problem of conservatism, and
Speaker 3: that sounds like an odd thing to say. But what
Speaker 3: he means is am I allowed to use this abstract metaphor?
Speaker 1: The second cave I.
Speaker 3: Think Strauss is pointing to the crisis of the West
Speaker 3: is that we've descended into a kind of ideological politics.
Speaker 3: Both reason and revelation are under attack, and so he
Speaker 3: points to Burke in the sense that we can't be
Speaker 3: conservatives in the ordinary sense because the crisis of the
Speaker 3: West means that we have to resurrect political philosophy. We
Speaker 3: we can't simply be in a mode of conservating, since
Speaker 3: reason and revelation are inner attack. And so I think
Speaker 3: what he means is the Burkean mode is not adequate
Speaker 3: to the crisis of the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, I could go with that. I think I probably
Speaker 1: agree with that.
Speaker 4: I definitely agree.
Speaker 1: With that. You have some baton here.
Speaker 4: You'll stop me before I get very far. Some politics
Speaker 4: we didn't get to, but our readers, our listeners will
Speaker 4: be completely fluent in newsom reinstates the death penalty for
Speaker 4: anyone caught investigating fraud. I know that sometimes since I
Speaker 4: get them both now, it can be Mandonmie looking into
Speaker 4: whether he can taxt residents of other cities. The Somali
Speaker 4: community of Minnesota would like to remind America that Wednesday
Speaker 4: was tax Day. Yeah, yeah, those are my favorite, though
Speaker 4: this one. You had to be have been paying a
Speaker 4: little attention to the news. Hi Barack yells Biden as
Speaker 4: car passes House with the lawn jockey. Sorry, okay Trump,
Speaker 4: Trump complains he's being crucified for comparing himself to Jesus.
Speaker 4: And then this was my favorite. I told Steve, Catholics
Speaker 4: find common ground with Protestants in ignoring what the Pope says.
Speaker 1: Master the time.
Speaker 2: Well, without John here, I've got to do both parts
Speaker 2: of the ending, which is always drank your whiskey and
Speaker 2: eat buy more books because you should. And finally, you
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Speaker 2: So until next week, and who knows what road trip
Speaker 2: will be on. Then that's it for us this week.
Speaker 2: By everybody, and.
Speaker 3: Leave the gets in a child bringing gets him them
Speaker 3: say that sorry kids back there.
Speaker 2: And Ricochet join the conversation.
Speaker 3: M hm